Tuesday, March 9, 2010

A Few Random Thoughts on Food

1) Our eating schedules are totally out of whack. Matt, Frankie, and I don't ever seem to be hungry at regular mealtimes. Instead, we get ravenous at, like, 3 pm and 1 am. And by ravenous, I mean, RAVENOUS. Like, I could eat absolutely everything in the cupboards and still ask for more.

2) The grocery store here is hard to navigate. I looked around forever, and couldn't find hot dogs, mac and cheese, tortillas, bagels, or any other of the staples that Frankie exists on. Plenty of varieties of shepherd's pie though. And an entire display of cheddar cheeses. Seriously. An outrageous number of different cheddars. (Not cheeses. Just cheddars. If you're looking for swiss, don't bother. This is a cheddar town, baby.)

3) Fish and chips are fantastic here. Mind-blowingly awesome.

4) I went to the grocery store today and got some food so that I could actually cook dinner. When I went to turn on the oven, though, here's what I saw:




Um... What???

Apparenly, a Master's Degree in the US doesn't even qualify me to use an oven in the UK.
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5 comments:

  1. doveMarch 9, 2010 at 11:20 AM

    What is up with that oven? Does the one indicator have a fan dripping water? Does not compute.

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  2. K. C. WellsMarch 9, 2010 at 12:59 PM

    That oven is bizarre! Did you ever figure it out? I'm glad to hear the fish and chips are good. Yum!

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  3. AnonymousMarch 9, 2010 at 3:43 PM

    Did you figure the oven out?? I don't know what I would do?


    ???from Pennsylvania???

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  4. jwjacoleMarch 9, 2010 at 8:10 PM

    I thought these were supposed to be universal symbols. What is the microwave like? I'd be saying some naughty words about then.

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  5. TifMarch 10, 2010 at 12:20 AM

    Thankfully, the microwave makes sense... It has two dials, one for the temperature, and the other for the cook time. No weird dials like on the oven.

    I did a little internet research but couldn't find a translation for all the oven symbols. I think the dripping fan is "defrost" (which is something I'd expect from a microwave, not an oven.) The one that looks like a box with small waves coming out of the top is the "cook with fan" setting. The others probably mean "cook without fan" and "cook with fan on high."

    It seems that most ovens out here work with some sort of fan on inside the cooking space. (Is this called "convection"? I'm thinking that might be right.) The theory is that it blows the hot air around and cooks the meal more thoroughly.

    Long story short, it took a lot of fiddling around and a lot of under-my-breath swearing, but eventually I got it to cook our dinner. (Which was yummy.)

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